Lifelong Learning

Therapeutic musicians do lot of reading during their training. It is only natural to keep reading books we find interesting. Here are some of our favorites (listed alphabetically).

The Art of Being a Healing Presence, A Guide for Those in Caring Relationships by James E. Miller and Susan Cutshall. This book shows how a difference can be made in the lives of others by learning to be present in a way that is healing, nurturing, and potentially even transforming. Seven steps to being a healing present are explained, including opening oneself, making the intention, preparing a space, honoring the other, offering what you have to give, receiving the gifts that come, and living a life of wholeness and balance.

Recommended by Beth Hunter

Attracting Perfect Customers by Stacey Hall. This book introduces the concept of Strategic Synchronicity which is based on nine principles that are not new but are often neglected in today's business world. Among them are the ideas that businesses don't need to search for customers if they are 'on purpose,' that collaboration, not competition, is required, and that businesses create their own 'clients from hell.'

Recommended by Cymber Quinn

Body, Mind and Music: A Practical Guide to Musical Wholeness by Laurie Riley. A discussion of our cultural relationship with music, how the brain learns it, how we practice it, how we perform it, how we listen to it, how we teach it, and finally, how it is used in purposely therapeutic ways.

Recommended by Alice Freeman

Compose Yourself: Awakening to the Rhythms of Life by Andy Barnett. Learn how to bring musical intent to everything you do. Fun, simple exercises throughout the book will help you joyfully bring harmony to all aspects of your life. Using your innate musicality to work with the ancient Vedic system of the chakras, you can strengthen your body, deepen your breath, open your heart, fine-tune your hearing, and sharpen your wit.

Recommended by Alison Ware

The Dancing Wu Li Masters, An Overview of the New Physics by Gary Zukav. As an enjoyable and informative introduction to quantum physics written for the layman, this book requires no previous mathematical or technical expertise.

The Dark Side of the Light Chasers, Reclaiming your power, creativity, brilliance, and dreams by Debbie Ford. The author believes that we each hold within us a trace of every human characteristic that exists and the capacity for every human emotion. We are born with the ability to express this entire spectrum of characteristics, but our families and our society send us strong messages about which ones are good and bad. So when certain impulses arise, we deny them instead of confronting them, giving them a healthy voice, then letting them go. It is to these feelings that Ford turns our attention, these parts of our selves that don't fit the personae we have created for the rest of the world. She shows us the effects of living in the dark.

Recommended by Ainslie Allison

Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gibson. Aprille finished this book while on vacation and really enjoyed Elizabeth’s journey from a nasty divorce to immersing herself in Italian food and culture while learning the language, meditating in an ashram in India and reconnecting with a healer in Bali.

Recommended by Aprille Isham

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. This novel takes place in India in 1975. Four strangers--a spirited widow, a young student uprooted from his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who have fled the caste violence of their native village are thrust together, forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future.

The Forest by Edward Rutherfurd. This 600+ page book combines fact with fiction and covers 900 years in the history of New Forest, a 100,000-acre woodland in southern England.

Recommended by Alice Freeman

The Harper's Manual by Laurie Riley. A guide for harp players and enthusists, covering everything not found in lessons! History of the harp, types of harps, what to know when buying a harp,care of the harp, using levers, practicing effectively, ergonomics, music structures, teaching, and much more.

Recommended by Cymber Quinn

The Healing Power of Sound, Recovery from Life-Threatening Illness Using Sound, Voice and Music by Mitchell L. Gaynor, M.D. This book presents Dr. Gaynor's sound-based techniques for self-healing—techniques that anyone can use, whether faced with a life-threatening disease or simply seeking relief from the stresses of daily life.

Recommended by Alice Freeman

Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende. From the sugar plantations of Saint-Domingue to the lavish parlors of New Orleans at the turn of the 19th century, this novel tells the story of a mulatta woman, a slave and concubine, determined to take control of her own destiny.

Recommended by Aprille Isham

Living Magically, A New Vision of Reality by Gill Edwards. In this guide, spiritual teacher Gill Edwards draws upon mystics, scientists, and channeled sources to challenge many "commonsense" assumptions about the world and provide a startling new vision of reality—a vision which can transform readers' everyday lives.

Recommended by Ainslie Allison

Love, Medicine and Miracles: Lessons Learned about Self-Healing from a Surgeon's Experience with Exceptional Patients by Dr. Bernie Siegel. This book is about how unconditional love is the most powerful stimulant of the immune system. Michelle liked the stories of the miraculous recoveries of patients who believed in the power of love.

Recommended by Michelle

Making Music For The Joy Of It! by Stephanie Judy. A discussion of every aspect of making music, from the point of view of both student and teacher. The section on performance anxiety is especially good.

Recommended by Alice Freeman

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer. This book recounts Joshua Foer's yearlong quest to improve his memory under the tutelage of top "mental athletes." He draws on cutting-edge research, a surprising cultural history of remembering, and venerable tricks of the mentalist's trade to transform our understanding of human memory.

Recommended by Aprille Isham

The Music Lesson, A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music by Victor L. Wooten. This book is the story of a struggling young musician who wants music to be his life, and who wants his life to be great. Then, from nowhere it seemed, a teacher arrives. Interesting story about how to gain Spiritual Growth.

Recommended by Aprille Isham

Music and Soul Making: Music Therapy and Complexity Science by Barbara J. Crowe. Explains why music therapy is effective.

Musicophilia, Tales of Music and the Brain by Dr. Oliver Sacks. Dr. Sacks is a neurologist and describes case studies of interesting patients with brain “malfunctions” involving music in one way or another. Not nearly as technical as The Power of Sound, Alice found this book very entertaining and it made her think about how lucky she was to have “normal” brain function.

Recommended by Alice Freeman

The Mythic Harp by Sarajane Williams. A book of myths, stories, pictures and music that describe the timeless magic and allure of this very ancient and noble instrument. The sacred symbolism of the harp as a mystic ladder, that unites this world and the next, is also described in the delightful, thematic narrative.

Recommended by Alice Freeman

No Guts, No Glory by Steven Lamm, M.D. withy Sidney Stevens. our gut is the source of many seemingly unrelated physical and mental disorders that afflict millions of Americans, such as kidney stones, asthma, ruptured abdominal aortas, and even cancer or heart attack. This is above and beyond the 90 million people who have gastrointestinal problems each year. It is important to understand the role the gut plays in health which goes far beyond digestion and then begin taking care of it.

Recommended by Joanne Griffen

No Time To Lose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva by Pema Chodron. Comments on an eighth-century text by the Indian Buddhist sage Shantideva as a guidebook for developing bodhichitta, an awakened mind that expresses itself in compassionate action to alleviate suffering.

Recommended by Aprille Isham

The Practice of Presence by Patty de Llosa. How to use Gurdjieff teachings, T'ai Chi, Jungian studies, and the Alexander Technique, with prayer and meditation as paths to wholeness. How to achieve the integration of body, mind and feeling.

Recommended by Alice Freeman

The Princes of Ireland by Edward Rutherfurd. In a smooth blend of fact and fiction, this 800 page book begins in pre-Christian Ireland and culminates in the dramatic founding of the Free Irish State in 1922. It is an interesting read for anyone with Irish ancestry.

Recommended by Alice Freeman

The Secrets of Spiritual Marketing: A Complete Guide for Natural Therapists by Lawrence Ellyard. This book offers everything you need to know about advertising and marketing your natural therapy business. Whether you are a seasoned practitioner or just starting out this book will provide you with all the proven tools you need to create a successful and profitable practice.

Recommended by Alison Ware

A Soprano on Her Head, Right-side-up reflections on life and other performances by Eloise Ristad. The author deals with complex problems which torment and cripple so many of our most creative and talented people and she does so with compassion, wisdom, and wit. This book illuminates through its conversational style the destructive inhibitions, fears, and guilt experienced by all of us as we fail to break through to creativity.

Recommended by Alice Freeman

Spiritual Partnership, The Journey to Authentic Power by Gary Zukav. This book reveals a revolutionary new path for spiritual growth. What began with an introduction to a major paradigm shift in The Dancing Wu Li Masters turned into a discussion of aligning our personalities with our soul in The Seat of the Soul. Now in Spiritual Partnership, Zukav guides the reader on this practical path to authentic power.

Stepping into the Magic, A New Approach to Everyday Life by Gill Edwards. Presenting a new approach to everyday life that questions old assumptions and introduces a new vision of reality, this book shares the author's dramatic experience of training with a kahuna in Hawaii, passing on the knowledge she acquired and offering readers the choice to grow through joy rather than struggle. The secrets revealed will explain how to have a foot in both worlds—walking with the right foot in the practical reality of everyday life, while using the left to tread the world of the shaman, mystic, visionary, mapmaker, and cocreator.

Recommended by Ainslie Allison

Talking to Alzheimer’s: Simple Ways to Connect When You Visit with a Family Member or Friend by Claudia Strauss. A wonderful book about communication.

Recommended by Aprille Isham

This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession by Dan Levitin. A fascinating study about what happens in the brain when we listen to music which both scientists and lay readers will enjoy.

Recommended by Aprille Isham

You Are Your Instrument by Julie Lyonn Lieberman. This unique guide helps all musicians: open up new avenues of expression through a pain-free, healthy, fluid approach to music-making; overcome performance anxiety, general tension, and muscular injury; and increase learning skills and facilitate more effective motor coordination.

Recommended by Alice Freeman

The World in Six Songs by Daniel Levitin. How six specific forms of music played a pivotal role in creating human culture and society as we know it.

Recommended by Stella Benson

Women as Healers: Voices of Vibrancy by Tami Briggs. This inspirational and uplifting book features thirty-one gifted healers from around the world. They share their stories of empowerment, wisdom, and life learning. This is a must read if you are interested in the power and resiliency of the human spirit.